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Damn it, Fozzy

Warrior Wrestling breaking the 'second half of 2020' attendance record while maintaining social distancing: Dezmond Xavier casually levitating his way to the ring.

Whaaaaaaaaaaaa?

Chris Jericho appears to have done a concert. In the middle of a pandemic. No social distance, No masks in sight. This may sound like a joke, but I'm dead serious when I say Jericho is going to kill more people than his buddy Benoit could have ever dreamed.

If I remember correctly, he came to Osaka at least three times but only went to Osaka Pro shows to the best of my knowledge. We fell out of touch a few years ago, though, so he might have... I can remember, though not clearly, that DJ was not feeling well and so Jonathan and Adam and the guys went back to the hotel while Kenji, Kae, some other fans, and I went out drinking... and our group bumped into none other than Jun Akiyama on our way to the first restaurant! He was training to recover from a knee injury (back injury?) at the time, I believe.

For as spot-on as his creative and business choices have been over the years, Jericho’s common-sense judgement leaves something to be desired if his openness to loony conspiracies isn’t a podcast gimmick, and based on this fucking idiotic concert.

Dope picture. Pretty sure I saw this in the 5 dollar bin at Walmart in 2005. Directed by Albert Pyun, co-starring Sasha Mitchell, and a cameo by Ice T as “Ricky Famiglia”

More concerning to me is the potential health risks associated with second-hand Fozzy concert.

Death by Fozzy concert. That exists in 2020.

Even billiards...

Realistically, his dumb behavior in the business goes all the way back to breaking his arm in SMW trying to do a shooting star press.

She mentioned in an interview that she struggled to get from 92kg to 100kg and had to use steroids. EDIT: Chris Charlton translated parts of the interview here (the Baba McDonalds story is funny):

True.

Watching the first episode of the women's tag tournament made me think of how smart NJPW is to make their rookies focus on mastering a small set of basic moves. It seems like a lot of the awkwardness in these matches comes from the wrestlers trying to do fancier stuff without the strong fundamentals you need make them look good. To be fair, I've had the same reaction to newer male wrestlers. I don't blame them--there's a clear incentive to try complicated stuff, since it's hard to get hyped for having good basics. But it grates on me as a viewer.

Surreal to see with the terrible injury Tyson Kidd suffered in June 2015. Kidd gave a great interview about it and his life in wrestling but I'm unable to find it. It's a must read. EDIT. Found it: https://www.thewhig.com/entertainment/television/tj-wilson-wrestlings-comeback-kidd

you can easily guess where Kamala was from based off his accent

Just to add on

Kamala was honestly very good at getting the maximum out of an audience reaction with very little, especially while the gimmick was fresh. His strengths were timing, selling, facial expressions and he could milk all that shit. Listen to these people go nuts for everything Atlas does.

Jomboy is on it.

I still can't get over "were not breaking any laws" FFS. I saw the mayor of Sturgis on CNN talking about the rally a couple weeks ago, and he casually mentioned that he was trying to be as safe as possible both as mayor and at "his day job." HIS DAY JOB. Listen, Chris Jericho is a top five guy for me, been following him since WCW when I was a kid, yada yada yada, but that dude is an absolute dolt. The only things that would make this ok for me are: 1) Fozzy couldn't get out of the booking (doubtful) 2) the OC match has already been taped (doubtful as noted earlier in the thread) 3) whatever test AEW uses can accurately detect the virus in his body if it is present between now and Wednesday even if he is asymptomatic. I legitimately do not know if this technology exists, so I file this under doubtful as well. I should note that this is from strictly a "you blew up next week's main event you absolute moron" perspective; I feel that the moral culpability and fucked updedness of being actively involved in a mass gathering speaks for itself.

Let me check my 2020 bingo card... No it's not on there surprisingly. Seriously though, I'm one of the biggest Jerichoholics on the board, but this is incredibly disappointing. Is AEW live or taped this week? I know he'll get tested so fingers crossed, but jeopardising one of the bigger matches of his AEW run and the welfare of his colleagues just to perform for a bunch of bikers is so so stupid.

I don't think this has been posted yet. Chicky Starr, TNT, Shane and Ricky Banderas brings a wad of blood.

What would happen if Bone Thugs n Harmony split up? What would Bone Thugs do WITHOUT Harmony? I like Jericho a lot as a wrestler, he's an all-time great, but it's not like his podcast hasn't long since exposed that he's an idiot outside of it.

I met Dynamic A (Adam) about ten years ago when he was part of a group of wrestling fans who came to Osaka. We hung out, eating and drinking and going to Osaka Pro shows. Definitely a good guy, intelligent and funny. Just as nice in real life as he is online. I tried to convince him to ditch academia and teach English in Japan. Glad to hear he's doing well. Clockwise from top left: Jonathan, DJ, Russell, Adam. Left to right: Kenji, Jonathan, Adam, Russell (about to hang snacks around Kuishinbo Kamen's neck). EDIT: I just remembered, I also bumped into him last year while playing Fire Pro World online.

I'm going to finish this one off since we're away this week: Some fall finishes here but it's more of a historic match than anything else, so I'm ok with getting these out now. Say what you would about him but he did have some great finishers. Just some good mauling here: This is a sleeper, and I've maybe never seen it's type before. It works exactly the same way but instead of pressing the arms into the arteries, you're pushing the fingers in acutely. I really like how he steps through the arms as well.

In those days, they wanted the heels to be big like Monster Ripper. Dump and Aja had the same demands placed on them. I didn't read the interview carefully, but the reason Bull retired is because she wrecked the ligaments in her knees. Eventually, she needed artificial knee replacement. She had to lose weight to have the operation, but she couldn't exercise because of her knees, so I believe she had a gastric bypass and then had her knees done. That's why she looks so thin right now.

As I recall, his doctoral thesis was on professional wrestling in Japan. At the very least, he was doing some kind of big essay on that subject.

Thanks for this. That was interesting minor bits of insight into a lot of the big 80s names dojo days.

What a fucking idiot

You know you’re a dastardly heel when you cheat with nunchucks.

Middle-aged managers just couldn’t go a year without their Peter Fonda/Jax Teller LARPfest?

I have never been less surprised by anything.

11/14/1887 Somebody has been posting a lot of these really old articles in Chris Hero's subreddit at r/WrestlingGenius. They're pretty cool.

If only one thing comes back from 50s French Catch, it should be the double leg nelson: Including this escape attempt and cut off: In my mind this was the exact moment that L'Ange Blanc decided that Villars needed to be punished (which would happen a couple of weeks later):

It's that time again:

Thread covering what Kenny and Nakazawa said at that event today for I believe a Japanese college on business in sports. Some interesting stuff in there. Some allusions to Ibushi, says he won't be wrestling in 10 years, extensive talk about the pandemic, and says they would be out of a job if they got canceled. Again, ?. I don't even like the thought.

How to torture an indie wrestling commentary team: Find an unknown guy and change his name to "Valentine Blake" Book him in a 4 corners match with Blake Christian, Christian Casanova and Casanova Valentine

Next week we'e got Tarres vs Kaiser This was basically headbutt vs nerve hold again. Kaiser is the sort of guy who won't hesitate to sell his hand huge after punching someone with a head of steel: I love this knee-assisted armbar: Kaiser with the 1959 (we're onto 59 now) Full Nelson Slam

Damn, that's a nice replacement.

The two big Avengers problems are the framerate drops (it's pretty clearly a game made for PS5 with a PS4 port), and the lack of an option to turn off the screenshake. One is fixable simply by waiting, the other is fixable by just adding an option.

Re: exec shakeup This reply to Meltzer is pretty much my thoughts on the comparison. Even though most boxing fans thought HBO Boxing (World Championship Boxing and Boxing After Dark) would be around forever, realistically, they had been in decline ever since the bullshit political split of Al Haymon vs. everyone else. That was almost a decade ago. HBO Boxing was still #1 in the market, but it would like comparing WWF in 1990 to WWF in 1995. It wasn't what it once was. The more fragmented boxing became (Top Rank on ESPN, PBC/Floyd Mayweather on Showtime and Fox, and Eddie Hearn's at the time small stable in the USA and Canelo/GGG on HBO and DAZN), the less likely marquee bouts would be able to be made. Right now, especially in the pandemic when promotional companies and platforms have completely tightened their purse strings, that decision looks absolutely genius. For a company that hasn't been on TNT a whole year, AEW has completely overachieved. I think a lot of this is much ado about nothing.